It is well known that over the last twenty years the music industry has seen a steady decline in the worldwide sales of pre-recorded music products. This decrease in sales had its genesis in the early 1980s when companies like Sony, CBS/Sony, Philips and Polygram jointly developed the first CD system. Prior to this, the music industry primarily sold its recordings on LPs and 45 RPM records which—due to their analogue nature—tended to deteriorate over time and did not provide the sound quality that many listeners desired. However, even before the development of the audio CD and CD players in 1982, music industry sales were already in decline. The music industry blamed its then-slumping sales on the development and widespread availability of cassette tapes: recall the music industry accusation that “Home taping is killing music”. However, other factors also contributed to this decline including the movement away from disco-style music in the 70s and the increasing availability of video games, video games tending to compete with music for the consumer's entertainment dollar.
However, during the years immediately following the introduction of the CD, music sales again began to climb as consumers recognized the numerous advantages of this medium, not the least of which was the amazing quality of digital recordings. Sales of new and older albums (as people upgraded their LPs to higher quality CDs) provided the industry with a steadily increasing market for its product. In addition, the birth of MTV spurred interest in a new music trend—the now so-called 80s synthie pop style—that lead to substantial new record sales. In summary, the introduction of a new high-quality technology and the advent of new music styles were among the factors that motivated consumers to begin buying music once again.
The success of the CD as a recording medium contributed to the continuing rise in music sales until the mid 90s, at which time sales peaked and then began to fall. According to industry studies, sales continued to decline from that time up to today, with the problem tending to worsen in recent years. Although this slump likely has many contributing factors, one often cited reason is the popularization of the MP3 coding technique which enables users to reduce digital audio to a fraction of its uncompressed size. Additionally, the growth of the Internet as a mechanism for distributing digital works via, e.g., file sharing has also played some role in the observed decrease in music sales.
There are several additional factors that have contributed—and still contribute to —the aforementioned sales decline. For example, other sources of electronic entertainment compete for consumer's time and their music industry dollars including DVDs, video games, cable TV and the Internet. Additionally, many older consumers are satisfied listening to the “oldies” that they repurchased on audio CDs and are not generally motivated to buy the latest “hit-song” by superstar “X”. Also younger costumers may not be as likely to show loyalty to a single artist as might have been the case in the past and, as a consequence, they may not automatically buy each album by the same artist over the years.
In summary, today, as in the past, the music industry points directly and almost entirely at new technology and file sharing as the causes of its woes, which is true to a certain extent, but ignores many important contributing factors.
In an effort to combat the pirating of audio CDs the music industry has implemented a two-pronged approach. The first prong has been legal prosecution of sites that facilitate the distribution of copyright music over the Internet coupled with highly visible legal prosecution of selected end users who participate in such distribution. The second prong is aimed at cutting off pirated music at its source, making it difficult or impossible to create MP3 files by creating audio CDs that cannot be read by a common PC. To this end a variety of different copy protection schemes have been developed which then were embedded on the audio CDs and were distributed with the releases.
Unfortunately, this two-pronged approach had only limited successes. The litigation campaign has had some success (e.g. Napster was forced to close) but lawsuits against end users created a good deal of ill will in the consumer community toward the industry. On the other hand, adding copy protection to audio CDs has given rise to heated opposition by several consumer organizations and by certain of the music industry publishers. Apparently the addition of copy protection to a CD causes it to no longer comply with the audio CD standard as defined by Philips. Further, consumers have reported many instances of common CD players unable to play protected audio CDs. As a consequence, in some instances the music industry has been forced to replace copy protected audio CDs with unprotected versions of same.
Of course, the music industry would welcome a technology change similar to that experienced with the introduction of the CD, a change that would have customers reaching for their wallets in order to upgrade their existing music libraries. However, the newest consumer audio technologies, e.g., SACD and the DVD-Audio format, although providing the consumer with higher quality sound, have had not generated any enthusiasm in the consumer market. One reason for this is that the average consumer cannot really appreciate the improvement in quality over conventional CDs, which was not the case when CDs were compared with music stored on records or tapes. As a consequence, consumers have not been ready to buy the same music for a third time.
Thus, in the final analysis, none of the initiatives discussed previously seems to have made any real difference in the buying habits of consumers and, instead, have hurt the reputation of the music industry in the eyes of the public.
Thus what is needed is a method that provides the music industry with a method of increasing its revenue from music sales that does not alienate consumers. It further must offer music tracks that can be read without problem on conventional CD players and PCs but that still encourages consumers to upgrade their existing music libraries. Still further it must provide a way for music companies and artists to control distribution of their works.
Heretofore, as is well known in the media editing industry, there has been a need for an invention to address and solve the above-described problems. Accordingly it should now be recognized, as was recognized by the present inventors, that there exists, and has existed for some time, a very real need for a system and method that would address and solve the above-described problems.
Before proceeding to a description of the present invention, however, it should be noted and remembered that the description of the invention which follows, together with the accompanying drawings, should not be construed as limiting the invention to the examples (or preferred embodiments) shown and described. This is so because those skilled in the art to which the invention pertains will be able to devise other forms of the invention within the ambit of the appended claims.